Chapter 15
523 Words
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
LUNA POV
She woke to silence.
Warm, golden silence — not the cold kind that haunted marble halls or the tense quiet of boardrooms before blood was drawn.
The kind that lived in sunlight filtering through linen curtains.
The kind she’d never had before.
Luna blinked, disoriented for a second.
Then she turned.
Cassian was still asleep.
Bare-chested. One arm draped over her waist. His dark hair was messy in that effortless way she secretly hated and secretly wanted to ruin further. The sheet barely covered his hips, and the sight of him — relaxed, open, unguarded — felt almost… surreal.
Last night still burned in her muscles.
She could feel him in every inch of her — the bruises of his grip on her hips, the ache between her thighs, the ghost of his mouth on her skin.
And the way he had kissed her afterward?
Like she was a secret he wanted to keep forever.
She studied his face in the morning light, tracing every line she knew so well by now — the scar near his eyebrow, the barely-there dimple when he wasn’t trying to hide it, the furrow that never quite left his brow even in sleep.
She reached out and smoothed that furrow with her thumb.
Cassian stirred, eyes still closed. “You’re staring.”
“You’re drooling,” she teased.
He cracked one eye open. “Only over you.”
She rolled her eyes, but a smile tugged at her lips before she could stop it.
Cassian stretched, the sheet shifting lower.
Luna bit her bottom lip. “You’re going to test my restraint.”
“You already failed that last night.”
He pulled her closer, and she let him. Her head found the hollow of his shoulder. They stayed like that for a while — the silence now heavier, not awkward, just full of the things neither of them knew how to say.
Cassian was the first to speak.
“I don’t do this.”
She nodded. “Me neither.”
He looked down at her. “But I want to.”
That surprised her.
More than his touch. More than the way he undressed her with reverence and hunger. More than the way he whispered her name like it tasted sacred on his tongue.
This — vulnerability — was new.
Real.
Dangerous.
“Then don’t ruin it,” she whispered.
“I won’t.”
Luna looked up at him. “Promise?”
He paused. “I don’t make promises.”
She tensed.
“But I’ll give you the truth,” he added. “And right now? This—” He ran a hand down her back, slowly. “—is the only place I want to be.”
And God help her…
She believed him.
They stayed in bed for hours.
Talking about nothing. Touching in quiet ways. Not s*x. Just presence. Fingers laced, lazy kisses, shared silence. It was all so… soft.
Too soft for the war they were in.
Too soft for people like them.
But maybe, just maybe, it was real.
And maybe that was what made it dangerous.
- Writer
